rolfsinjpn

Leftover VSC filer here (Filed June 1, NOA1 June 6, Biometric July 6). My wife went to the immigration office to get a stamp for impending travel today and was told she got approved on Friday! They still gave her the stamp since the travel is coming up in two weeks. But so relieved this nightmare of a process is finally ending.

Does anybody have experience filing for expedited processing? I have to leave on 15 month international research trip for my Ph.D. on June 1, which happens to be the one year anniversary of my wife's filing date to VSC. At the current rate we'll be extremely lucky if she gets approved before I leave. Not to mention having to wait an additional month for re-entry permit processing. I called customer service today and the representative suggested filing for expedited processing. My understanding is this has to meet certain extreme criteria. The only possible argument I could think of is the financial burden of having to maintain two households on a measly graduate research stipend. Should we even bother?

I guess I spoke too soon. Moved from "Ready" to "Administrative Processing" to "Issued" in a matter of about 30min. Then got a response to the email I'd sent earlier today saying that the courier would pick up the visa for delivery at 4pm.

Some people have had a quick turn around. I think it depends on where you apply, what visa you apply for and how big the backlog is (Seoul reports being fully functional again with no delays). Some people have been waiting over a week (like us) for their status just to switch from ready. And some places are experiencing just a small delay, such as an additional day or two. So I believe it's entirely dependent on your individual embassy.

If you're refering to my earlier quote re: Seoul, I've only been able to confirm that they're processing US passports without delays. American Citizen Services just told me that they have no information on immigrant and non-immigrant visa process times and sent me to the same outsourced customer service agency that has been unhelpful or unresponsive to my previous queries.

My wife's interview was on July 22 and we're still at "ready" with a status updated date now changed to today. Not out of the woods yet.

Sounds like someone pressed ctrl+alt+dlt and messed the whole world up!

More like "we spent all the money on adding all these fancy features like facial recognition and finger print scanning instead of upgrading our infrastructure to prevent massive collapse from the ineveatable increase in data."

My favorite part:

Q: If CA is fee funded, why can’t it build a robust database that doesn’t fail?

The database has grown dramatically, in both quantity of data and functionality, and vastly improved border security. In addition to checking names against databases, we review fingerprints and perform facial recognition.

We are working towards modernization of our software, hardware, and infrastructure. Demand for our services outpaced our modernization efforts.

Consular Affairs has, and has had, a redundant system. However, the upgrade affected not only our current processing capability, but also our ability to use our redundant system. This is one of the issues we are urgently addressing now.

http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/english/news/ccd-performance-issues.html

Less promissing update:

"The Department of State continues to work to restore our visa system to full functionality. We anticipate it will take weeks to resume full visa processing capacity. We continue to prioritize immigrant visas, including adoption cases. So far, we have been able to issue most cases with few delays."

http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english.html

The embassy in Seoul reports that they are now able to process US passports "without delay." Hopefully this is good news for visa processing as well.

https://www.facebook.com/americansinkorea?hc_location=timeline

Revision: we called the Jongno Police Office near Anguk station today and were told that my wife's local police office was misinformed. The certificate they were going to give her was, in fact, the wrong one. We went to the Jongno Police Office and picked it up same day.

Lesson here: use the Jongno Police Office. They seem to handle these requests a lot and know what they are doing. This is not the case with local police offices.

My wife just got back from her local police station to get her Korean National Police Certificate (KNPC: 범죄경력 · 수사경력 회보서) required for her immigrant visa interview. The embassy told us we could get the certificate in under 24hours, but apparently the laws have changed. There is now a one week waiting period to recieve the certificate. We were lucky that we still have two weeks until the interview.

If you need this document I recommend giving yourself extra time.

Hi,

My wife and I are going to the Seoul Embassy tomorrow to submit our I-130 for her CR-1. As some one about a month a head of us in the game any updates on how the process is going in terms of timeline, unexpected issues, etc? Appreciate it.